England’s Historic Seascapes Pilot Projects and Method Development

Progress with HLC Programme and Seascapes pilot project areas. © English Heritage England’s Historic Seascapes extends and complements English Heritage’s national programme of Historic Landscape Characterisation (HLC).

The extension of HLC principles to the sea required much innovative work and novel approaches to accommodate the far greater three-dimensionality in historic processes and their translations into material expressions and landscape perceptions. Further complications arise from the lack of comprehensive mapped fixed boundaries so familiar on land.

Various methodological options to meet these and other challenges were trialled and refined through the Programme’s pilot projects covering a range of circumstances encountered off England’s coastline. 

England’s Historic Seascapes, Liverpool Bay Pilot Project Report Cover. Round 1, Oct. 2004-March 2006, to 12 nautical mile limit of the UK Territorial Sea:

• Liverpool Bay and waters off the Fylde (Wessex Archaeology)

Round 2, March 2006-March 2007, to the limit of UK Controlled Waters:

• The Solent and waters off the Isle of Wight (Bournemouth University,
• Southampton University and Hants & Wight Trust for Maritime Archaeology)
• Southwold to Clacton (Oxford Archaeology)
  Withernsea to Skegness (Museum of London Archaeology Service)
• Scarborough to Hartlepool (Cornwall Historic Environment Service)

England’s Historic Seascapes, Method Consolidation Project Report Cover The family of methodologies resulting from these pilots underwent detailed review and assessment in a method consolidation project by Cornwall Historic Environment Service from September 2007 to March 2008. This project identified the most effective combinations of approaches and techniques, bringing them together to form a nationally applicable HSC methodology. 

With an immediate practical aim of providing a better-informed framework for management responses to marine mineral aggregates extraction now and in the future, funding for the Seascapes Programme’s pilot and consolidation projects has come from the Aggregates Levy Sustainability Fund. 

The Method Statement detailing the consolidated national HSC methodology, along with a range of resources from the pilot projects, are publicly available on the Archaeological Data Service website:  http://ads.ahds.ac.uk/project/alsf/search_maritime.cfm

An extensive practical demonstration of the national HSC methodology will be provided by its implementation across a substantial area of England’s share of UK Controlled Waters during 2008-9.